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Thursday, April 28, 2011

The "trying to become" a garden, Garden Update



Continuing with the Homeschool Garden Challenge, we spent Tuesday working on our plants and doing some outside clean up to get ready to plant. We've had 13 straight days of rain here in the Finger Lakes region of New York, and it's not even May yet, so we haven't even thought about planting anything outside yet. It's been unseasonably warm the last couple of days, but we've had snow on Mother's Day in the past, so we won't attempt outdoor planting until after then.

We have, however, started more seeds inside!



Our cherry tomato plants. In my first garden post, these were started in an egg carton, which worked out really, really well! I wish I had taken a picture before transplanting them to these bigger start containers. We thinned out some of the weaker looking seedlings, and gave some to our neighbor as well. With all the rain we have had, the upper right corner of this pic is where water was streaming in through our kitchen ceiling just an hour after we finished transplanting these. So far, they are ok, but I'm not expecting them to make it either. We're going to finish growing these out in hanging baskets, since they are the small variety, rather then in the ground and staking them up.




Lettuce! We started some seeds inside so we're not wasting time waiting for mother nature in NY to figure herself out :) We've learned that we can actually sow these twice! Though best to start they seeds indoors as well, as they may not seed well in a hot/dry summer heat. If nothing else, we'll have 2 attempts to grow lettuce!



And here is everything in front of the kitchen window. ON the left is my oldest pot with some cherry tomatoes (they hadn't even popped up when we posted last!) and on the right is the kids herb starter. That has parsley and basil in it.

So in the next couple of weeks we'll be building our raised garden bed, and considering getting some containers and strawberry plants as well. We still have cucumbers, green beans and cantaloupe to sow, but I'm not sure as we'll do it all, as that would mean everything but the lettuce and herbs are climbers!

Mostly, the kids are I are SUPER excited about this, and hope it's a successful garden!

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